It's not just the cost, although I'm sure that plays an important role. It's not the kid- vs. adult-oriented thing. It's location.
When I was a kid (you know, I start off way too many of these posts that way) I remember getting my comics at the local corner grocery/party type store. You could sometimes find them in the magazine section of the grocery store. (Obviously there were no stores specifically for comics, and I didn't go to newsstands at that point.) They had one of those spinning racks, I think. You could also get older comics, sealed in plastic bags in groups of two or three, minus a chunk of the front cover.
Point is, the comics were sold in places where I tended to go. If I stopped at the store for a pop or some candy or whatever, the comics were there as well. Maybe while I was waiting for my friend to decide between a Milky Way and a Snickers I'd look through the rack. I saw them on a regular basis. I knew where they were. They were always more or less in my world.
Now when my kids want to pick up a comic (in addition to the ones we get by mail), we have to go out of our way to get them to the one newsstand in a 15-mile radius that carries any at all. It's not a place they'd go on their own. If they didn't have a comic-loving mom, chances are that comics wouldn't even be on their radar.
2 comments:
I grew up in a small town in Montana, and while it sucked ever so much; when I was a brat I could get comics at two grocery stores, a convenience store, and a weird video store that had the black and white mags. Now it's probably an 80 mile drive for comics, I reckon. Not very encouraging.
Yep - when I got into comics more seriously in my mid-teens (around 1985), I collected nearly every Marvel title and I got them ALL at a local grocery store, the H&H. I'd go every week for the newest ones and never missed an issue.
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